Redskins Bonus Quotes

If you were wondering whether the Redskins-Eagles game could rightly be considered hard-fought, you came to the right place. Quotes from an extremely quiet locker room:

Joe Gibbs: "I think we had it figured right; we knew that they were going to play extremely hard. So for us, we felt like we had to play hard, we had to play error-free, and I really feel like today we played hard but made a lot of mistakes, penalties, and turned the ball over at a crucial time....It was as hard-fought as I thought it was going to be, but the thing I said to our guys is we lose a game like that, we all lost it, we all lost it together, that always includes me, and we're going to go forward together. And so it's a tough day for us, and it was a tough one to take....We've won games in the second half, we won two overtime games. So we have at times played well in the second half. Certainly we won some very close, hard-fought games."

Rock Cartwright, on the loss: "This is ridiculous. This is not supposed to happen. This is not supposed to happen when you go out and bust your tail like this....You've got to execute under pressure. If you don't execute under pressure you won't win football games. And that's what we didn't do today, we didn't execute under pressure, we let them score, we didn't score, so what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing wrong? Where do we need to go? What do we need to do? Do I need to do more? If I can do more, let me do more. Tell me. Tell me what else I need to do and I'll do it. Anything to win football games."

Chris Samuels on whether the team lacks a killer instinct: "I guess you can say that, to be honest. I hate to say that, but right now we've got to develop that and we've got to do it fast. We've got to learn how to put our foot on them and finish them, and until we do that we're not as good as we're supposed to be."

Fred Smoot on finishing: "That's the thing, we have to learn how to start putting our feet on people's throat at the end of the game. Redskins, we had a lot of chances to win this game. They're just happy they got out of here, let alone with a win. So you know, we gave this away."

Smoot on locker-room depression: "I ain't gonna let anyone be depressed. Put it like this, I have been in the SEC and lose in Arkansas but I've got Ole Miss next week. You don't have to wake me up for Ole Miss. You ain't got to wake me up for Dallas. You don't have to wake anybody up in this room for Dallas."

Gibbs on the draw on third-and-goal: "We felt like they might be playing soft and we would have a chance to pop something in. They were dropping everybody and we felt like there was a chance to take the shot on the draw there."

Al Saunders on the same: "We didn't want a situation where we would have a bad play, an interception. They were playing tight coverage. We thought we would get them backed off, playing eight defenders deep--which they ended up doing--and we thought we could squeak it in there and kind of catch them a little bit by surprise."

Gibbs on going for two so early in the game: "That was a coach's decision that can go either way. We had been having some success and felt good about what we wanted to call."

Saunders on the offense:"We just didn't make any big plays. When you look at the plays we made in the game, there were no real big plays. I think to score a little bit more, that's what you'd like to do. To think we were gonna score 25 points on these guys, we would have felt pretty good about that, but we didn't take care of all the opportunities we got."

Jason Campbell on the red zone: "We shot ourselves in the foot. We get to the one-yard line and that has happened to us twice this year. It's a tough pill to swallow, but whatever the reason, we need to find a way to get in there."

Gibbs on Campbell running the no-huddle: "Some quarterbacks have a real feel for it, and we think he is one of those quarterbacks."

Cartwright on the red zone: "My teammates know. They see it. It's black and white. You can see it yourself. Anybody can see it. When you're in the red zone, you need seven points, you don't need three. You need seven. Bottom line. It's clear as day. Anybody can see that. Come on man, it's simple. It's simple. Seven instead of three."

Samuels on recovering: "It's a tough loss, we'll sit around and we'll cry about it for a while, we'll watch the tape tomorrow and then we'll get it out of our brains and we've got to get ready to load up for next week."

Reader Terry, who didn't appreciate my Clinton Portis coverage: "Danny Boy: For your safety, use a condom when you pleasure an athlete. After all, you don't know where Clinton Portis has been."

Donovan McNabb on all the Philly chaos in recent weeks: "I'm sure you've had some information to write articles about and talk about on TV, but it doesn't bother me....I don't get caught up in what he-said, she-said, or whatever you guys write. My focus is to be continually prepared on Sundays while having fun in the process."

Brian Westbrook on the Redskins' blitz: "We saw that they were blitzing early on. Unfortunately for them, we had the right play called at the right time, and when you have everyone working hard, just like we did, it's hard to stop that."

Takeo Spikes on losing hope: "I was just thinking to myself on the sideline that there was no way I could et back on that train after losing. I think that a lot of the other guys thought the same way."

Samuels on the goal-line failures: "I just think we need to do a better job up front. They made big plays down there, it's simple as that. I've got to watch the tape and see what happened, but those guys made big plays, goal line stand, can't take anything from them. I wouldn't just put everything on our backs, those guys they get paid a lot of money to make plays as well."

Pete Kendall on the same: "It's hard down there. You're working with limited space, they're outstanding when you look at where they rank across the league in that situation. We scored three [red-zone TDs] and kicked two field goals. That wasn't enough today."

Todd Wade on the same: "Once you get on that three [yard-line], it gets a little tougher. It's easier to be on the one or even farther back; the three's always a tough yard line to move the ball on. We've just got to be more successful. We'll come back and look at the film; if we all did our job, then we would have scored, that's all it comes down to."

Ladell Betts on not getting any first-half touches before his late-game fumble: "That's no excuse. The bottom line is no matter what happens I've got to hold on to the ball. The refs felt like it was a fumble, I thought I was down but the bottom line is no matter if I'm down or not I've got to hold onto the ball."

Antwaan Randle El on whether it was a wasted effort: "No, you won't say wasted. You get better or you get worse. We didn't get worse today; we just didn't close out the game. We got better in a lot of phases; we just need to put that together for the rest of the stretch."

Smoot on the injuries: "Man that's something you will never hear me say, probably never hear a Redskin say. We're not gonna blame it on anything. I'll blame it on myself before I'll blame it on something like that because this is the NFL, and when people get hurt, people have to step up."

Smoot on finding the positives: "No, I don't think there's nothing, because I feel like we was the better team and we lost. There's nothing positive you can take. The only thing you can take positive, we stick together and come back and play a great game this week, then you can take something positive from it."

Andre Carter on the same: "Such a close margin. It's tough. It's definitely frustrating. It's one of those things like, 'Ach, we're so close.' But you've got to bounce back from it and just go forward."

London Fletcher on bouncing back: "We have the ability and talent to do that, but we need to at some point in time get a winning streak established. We hope to start it this next Sunday in Dallas."

as sad as I am to say it, I think I may agree. Gibbs will always have a special place in my sports heart - but I believe the game may have passed him by. The mentality of the Skins has been "Play not to lose" for the last 4 years. We need a new philosophy. We knelt at the end of the 1st half instead of taking a hail mary. We punted or kicked field goals on multiple short yardage situations even though the odds favor going for it - we just don't have a killer instinct.

People rip on the Pats for the way they are playing this year - but the Pats would never lose a game in this manner.
Fortuna Favet Fortibus - Fortune Favors the Bold

It's time to recognize that the Redskins team of head/asst. head coaches cannot effectively coach. There are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians for the "coach by committee" approach to work. The players need to know who the 'MAN' is and to whom they are accountable. The Joe Gibbs era is over. Let Al Saunders take the reins. Dan Snyder "JUST DOESN'T GET IT!"

I think this is a Saunders problem more than a Gibbs one. 1 year before Saunders comes, the Skins win a game in the playoffs. He shows up, total regression.

I'm not a knee jerk guy, but something isn't working here. I grew up in the reign of Gibbs I, but it might be time. If nothing else, Saunders has to go and Gibbs has to win or lose on his own shoulders.